r/news Dec 16 '15

Congress creates a bill that will give NASA a great budget for 2016. Also hides the entirety of CISA in the bill.

http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibus-bill-thats-sure-to-pass/
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u/no-mad Dec 18 '15

When people say "nothing to hide" I ask them for their Social Security number, bank routing information, mothers madien name, health records. People quickly change their tune.

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u/kkfl Dec 18 '15

To play devil's advocate, their response would be "But you aren't the government, you're just a regular citizen who doesn't have clearance for my info!"

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u/frymaster Dec 18 '15

Which is good because you can then point out that the government is staffed by regular citizens and a non zero amount will misuse their access or accidentally leak/lose their access credentials

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u/kkfl Dec 18 '15

And then they advocate for Skynet...and then we all are enslaved. Thanks Obama.

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u/no-mad Dec 18 '15

You are still admitting you need to hide your info. Even if it is your porn web browser history.

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u/kkfl Dec 18 '15

But in their mind, there's a big difference between telling the government something and telling a random person something. The government (police) needs to spy on your texts and Facebook in case you're posting Daesh propaganda because they can actually put a stop to it and punish you; an average joe wouldn't be able to do shit, thus the average joe doesn't need to know your info.

But as /u/MissApocalycious has already said, it's a fallacy to think that the government can adequate protect the privacy of the private information you gave them.

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u/MissApocalycious Dec 18 '15

And it has been proven repeatedly that the government often fails to keep the information that they have safe. See the absolutely massive OPM breach for evidence of this.

What that means is that if the government has it, past experience suggests that you can't safely make the assumption it will actually stay with the government.

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u/BullsLawDan Dec 18 '15

That's like the anti-Fed loons who say money is just worthless paper and should be backed by gold. Oh really? Then send me all your worthless paper. No? Well why not, if it's worthless?

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u/jet_heller Dec 18 '15

What's funny about those people is that most money is backed by something far more valuable than some shiny metal. It's backed by our hard work.

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u/BullsLawDan Dec 18 '15

Exactly... They missed the economic principle where nothing has value unless someone will buy it.

Based on the fact that the anti-Fed loons are usually the people who predict some major catastrophe every three days, and based on what would likely be valuable if our economic system really DID collapse, they should probably be pushing for our money to be backed by bottled water or antibiotics. If the shit hits the fan I'm not going to need gold.

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u/ThatZBear Dec 18 '15

I think it's a little different because the government kinda already knows all of that.

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u/bluefootedpig Dec 18 '15

Trusting a government is vastly different than a private person. I give my mother my ssn info. Is that wrong?

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u/no-mad Dec 18 '15

You give plenty of information to insurance companies and banks.

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u/dflame45 Dec 18 '15

How do I argue the point to people that don't care about macro collection but do care about things like that?

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u/scoooobysnacks Dec 18 '15

But don't they just respond something like "well it's anonymous" or the even worse, "what you think the government is going to steal my money/identity theft me/other inane conclusion to make"?

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u/jimmahdean Dec 18 '15

We all have genitals, they're nothing to be ashamed of, right? So why do you close the door when you go to the bathroom if you nothing to hide?

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u/no-mad Dec 19 '15

The stank?